


The End of Infinity

by TheWaterIsASham



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Drug use mention, M/M, Minor Character Death, if I don't write this no one will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:52:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9632417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaterIsASham/pseuds/TheWaterIsASham
Summary: Begg and Bartolo's relationship from Begg perspective from when the meet in the Lotto Valentino streets to when Begg embraces his own form of oblivion.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is me indulging myself because this is my tiny weird ship and I can do with it what I please

Bartolo Runorata wasn't born an old mob boss, in fact when Begg met him he was more like Aile than the man he would become. Begg had returned to Lotto Valentino some time before the young criminal came into his life, but it was far from the city he remembered. It was still a strange town where the libraries and port were like a sheet of ice over a lake of secrets, but this time Begg was skating on top instead of crawling across the bed (ironic considering where this return would lead him). He still sold his drugs to the rich and the powerful, still snuck around the darker corners of the city, still focused more on his product than the world around him, but even he could tell that the small little city and moved on to newer and shinier conspiraces (though he swore he saw familiar faces in familiar masks sometimes.)  
“You're the drug dealer right” were the first words Bartolo Runorata said to him. He was just on the edge of being a man and spoke with a kind of confidence that assumed he would be obeyed. Begg just nodded. “There’s nowhere to go here. The Campanella's have it all locked up except for what's legal and that’s bullshit anyways. You can go farther than this.” Begg almost chuckled at the boy’s assumptions, Begg couldn’t go father, he’d gone as far as he could and fallen back many times. “I’m going to America, everything is new and changing there. We could make a very good living there.”  
Begg stared down at the young man. “Wwwhy?” he asked.

The young man pulled out several bags. Begg recognized them as the drugs he had been distributing. “ This is what I got in a week. I have many methods that I believe could benefit both of us. Or hurt you, depending”. It was a significant amount of product, definitely indicative of some sort of talent and Begg had been stagnating on his work anyway, so he nodded. The young man’s smile was a handsome addition to his face. 

The ship to America took less time than the Advena Avis had taken, but it still left the two men with plenty of time alone. Begg told him the truth about his drugs, his immortality, his reasons for leaving. In return he learned that the young man was leaving nearly nothing behind. He had no family worth mentioning and Lotto Valentino still had no churches, so he also lacked many of the values and prejudices those institutions would have taught. He wanted to become rich and important by any means necessary, and to have something that his own descendants might be proud of. Begg had initially thought they would only be business partners, but he found himself becoming captivated by the young man's confidence. He knew that it was wrong, after all he was nearly 200 years Bartolo’s senior and they were both men, but Begg could count the good decisions he had made in life on one hand and when the young man kissed him in the crowded galley while the other passengers dreamed of a new land, he fell easily into a new addiction. 

Bartolo had been right about America’s promise. Begg had no illusions about the country's paving materials, but the young man seemed to be bringing in money as if there really was gold in the streets. Bartolo was selling Begg’s product as fast as he could manufacture it, and he moved into other criminal enterprises as quickly as the opportunities arose. Begg had thought that Bartolo would tire of him quickly, after all he was an immortal addict with a speech impediment and Bartolo Runorata was an up and coming crime lord whose charisma was only matched by his ruthlessness, but night after night Bartolo came back to his bed and whispered about how important Begg was to him and how they were both reaping the rewards of success. Begg tried not to believe him, tried to remind himself that sweet words did not mean a sweet truth, but Bartlo gave him the materials and lab space he needed and made him feel useful and wanted in a way he hadn’t felt in such a long time. Begg wondered sometimes what Bartolo saw in him, especially as his business began to fill with people more attractive and even more interesting than he was. He asked once and it seemed to puzzle Bartolo for a bit. His answer puzzled Begg even more.  
“I can trust you”

Bartolo even got married, starting his family with the new century. Begg was in the wedding party, though had specifically requested to not make a speech. Francesca was beautiful and well bred and the kind of person that Bartolo likely had no personal interest in. Begg thought he should back off then, let the mortals be with mortals while he refocused on his work, but Bartolo never looked at her the way he looked at him and Begg realized that Bartolo’s pain would hurt him far more than his own. He had become numb to his own pain

Begg would say the largest change he saw in Bartolo was after his first daughter was born. Of course he had been changing gradually over the years, becoming more mature, more measured, but the birth of that little girl seemed to flip a switch. He went from being all about risk to working for a legacy. He began investing in more legal businesses. He bought a house upstate with large grounds and stocked it with bodyguards that one could almost consider normal (as normal as mob bodyguards could be) and starting talking about setting examples and establishing foundations. He even forbid mentioning his real profession to his daughter until she was old enough to handle it.

But despite all this he still focused most of his energy on work, to the point that he would only make the trip upstate a few times a month and only spend enough time with Francesca to produce further children (all girls). Begg realized that most of the other people in his life would regard Bartolo Runorata as cold. It was true that Bartolo was not a man to mince words or treat strangers with affection, but he was still as human as he was in that alley in Lotto Valentino. He always found time to stop in Beggs workshop for longer than it took to simply pick up product, or to get Begg some odd materials he needed that would always come wrapped with little bows, or to spend the night making Begg feel better than he had felt for most of most of a century.

As Bartolo got older and Begg didn’t things began to come clear. The influenza took Francesca, not long before her eldest daughter was married. Begg almost wished that he could go back in time and demand Maiza share the recipe for the elixir, but too much had passed and they were enemies now, instead of old friends. Bartolo began to seek the elixir, though this was perhaps due as much to boredom as to a desire to be immortal. America had surrendered its bounties to Bartolo Runorata and he had most everything a man could want: money, power, family, even love. Bartolo was not yet ready to sit on his laurels, so immortality became the goal. Perhaps the fact that immortality would require taking actions outside of what even the mafia would consider normal, or force them to cavort with rather strange bedfellows even added to the appeal. Perhaps that's why Bartolo didn’t deeply involve Begg in the process. Perhaps that's why Bartolo didn’t simply approach Maiza or Szilard instead of following the roundabout path he did. Or maybe all of those things happened for another reason. Begg would never learn.

If Bartolo had ever loved anyone as much as he loved Begg, than that person would be Carzelio Runorata. It was of course, a very different kind of love, but also very much the same. This wasn’t just because Cazze was his grandson, or even that he was Bartolo’s first male descendant. It took time to realize just how similar the two were. Both had a taste for the strange, especially in people. Both were fully capable of being charming, but kept their inner selves for a chosen few. Both pursued their goals with both drive and patience, completely self assured that they will obtain what they wanted. Neither asked questions, they demanded answers. Cazze of course had an innocence and purity that Bartolo had lost long ago, which only seemed to make Bartolo treasure him more. Cazze also seemed closer to his grandfather than to any other adult. Often Begg would catch the young man adapting his gestures to fit his grandfather's, long after the age that most children mimicked. Begg never quite figured out his own relationship with his lovers heir. Perhaps in a more tolerant time he could have been a second grandfather, but it was too early for that and too late for Begg to be as energized around children as he once was. Not a day went by that Begg didn’t think about how he failed the last child he was charged with. Even if Begg was an immortal he felt infinitely older than he was when he drank the elixir. So he remained nothing to Cazze except one of the Runorata's resources, one that would become obsolete with the rise of heroin and the golden age it ushered in. Perhaps it was best that way. 

Bartolo retired after Cazze was married. It was a big and wonderful affair, with all of the pomp and circumstance associated with a high society wedding. Begg watched from the shadows and never told anyone how often he noticed the groom’s eyes straying to another face in the crowd. Everyone was afforded their own secrets. It took Bartolo a while to adjust to retirement. Begg knew he had been working since they had met, and Bartolo had likely started long before. He was fully confident in Carzelio’s ability and knew that retiring to late was hazardous to a mob boss’s health, but he would still pace the floors and make plans that would never be executed, long after he should have gone to bed. Begg took all of this with good humor, after all Bartolo had managed all of Begg's quirks for years. They were far too dependent on each other in the last years, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Both Bartolo’s body and Begg’s mind had seen better years, and there were worse things to depend on than love. So in the closest thing to privacy they loved each other and all was as well as it could be. 

A few years into Bartolo’s retirement, Begg received a note from Maiza asking him to accompany him and Czeslaw on a search for their fellow immortals. Begg considered it for a while until he noticed another letter was announcing that Bartolo had become a great grandfather for the second time and Begg knew what his choice was. Bartolo would see that child become a young women, but not much more. He passed the same day that the most famous mafia movie came out, and irony that annoyed his grandson no end. The funeral was a large affair, more for ceremony than mourning. Begg wondered if that’s what Bartolo would have wanted, it certainly wasn’t what he did. As soon as the crowds had cleared Begg skulked back to his laboratory and grabbed everything he could possibly inject. No one thought to stop him.

 

Most times, on that bed in that hospital where people had been trained not to ask questions, Begg would be on the Advena Advis, explaining to Czes just how the parts of the boat fit together, fully unaware of what would follow from that calm moment. But sometimes he would be on a different boat, lifetimes of pain later, and on that boat he would look at the beginning of the end and know that somehow, someway, It could all be worth it.


End file.
